only at the expense of our desire for society, has now come to be the
simple quality of our natural disposition--the element proper to our
life, as water to a fish. This is why anyone who possesses a unique
individuality--unlike others and therefore necessarily isolated--feels
that, as he becomes older, his position is no longer so burdensome as
when he was young.

For, as a matter of fact, this very genuine privilege of old age is
one which can be enjoyed only if a man is possessed of a certain
amount of intellect; it will be appreciated most of all where there is
real mental power; but in some degree by every one. It is only people
of very barren and vulgar nature who will be just as sociable in their
old age as they were in their youth. But then they become troublesome
to a society to which they are no longer suited, and, at most, manage
to be tolerated; whereas, they were formerly in great request.

There is another aspect of this inverse proportion between age and
sociability--the way in which it conduces to education. The younger
that people are, the more in every respect they have to learn; and it
is just in youth that Nature provides a system of mutual education,
so that mere intercourse with others, at that time of life, carries
instruction with it. Human society, from this point of view, resembles
a huge academy of learning, on the Bell and Lancaster system, opposed
to the system of education by means of books and schools, as something
artificial and contrary to the institutions of Nature. It is therefore
a very suitable arrangement that, in his young days, a man should be
a very diligent student at the place of learning provided by Nature
herself.

But there is nothing in life which has not some drawback--_nihil est